The operation of motor vehicles often requires the user to exercise considerable judgment in the manoeuvring of vehicles with respect to other objects such as other vehicles or static objects. This is particularly apparent when a vehicle is in reverse negotiating a parking space, driveway or similar. While in reverse, the driver is required to exercise judgment in respect of the most distant corner of the vehicle from the driver's own position and also has an obscured view of objects that may be in the path. Although the use of side mirrors can assist, there are still significant blind spots.
It is already known for some vehicles to provide sensors to sense surrounding objects and provide the driver some form of indication of the existence of the object or, more preferably, the proximity of the object. Typically these may comprise proximity sensors placed in locations such as at the rear corners of a vehicle and communicating through the vehicle-wiring frame to some form of indicator near the driver.
One of the disadvantages of the present products is that they provide insufficient flexibility in use. Such sensors are generally permanently fitted to a particular vehicle and use the vehicles own wiring system such that it is not convenient to utilize all or portions of the system in another vehicle. Therefore, a driver with multiple vehicles needs to consider the purchase of multiple systems and mounting to each individual vehicle.
A significantly greater difficulty is incurred when a trailer, caravan or other towed item is fitted to the vehicle. The vehicles rearwardly mounted sensors can do no more than indicate the location of the towed object and the system needs to either be ignored or switched off during towing. Of course, reversing with a trailer, caravan or other towed object fitted is considerably more difficult both in terms of judgment and feasibility and a sensor and indicator arrangement would be of considerably greater use that could be fitted to the towed vehicle.
There are difficulties with the present apparatus in fitting such systems to towed vehicles. While it was possible to mount sensors on the rear of a towed vehicle, there is generally no convenient wiring system that may be utilized to connect the sensors to an indicator located by the driver. Such systems are difficult to retrofit to existing towed vehicles that have not been designed with wiring to accommodate such apparatus. Furthermore, on linking the wiring to the vehicle itself, the electrical connections between vehicles available for towed vehicles are relatively few. These are often already saturated in the provision of power and signals to indicators, brake lights, parking lights and other functions. This may cause considerable difficulty in accommodating a sensor signal through the towed vehicle.
The above-described known reversing aids that utilize sensors placed on the rear of a vehicle and attached to some form of alarm within the cabin of the vehicle are generally incorporated in new vehicles and hard wired into the vehicles such that they have no portability, retro-fittability and are redundant once any form of trailer, caravan or the item is towed behind the vehicle. In fact, existing systems would normally need to be disabled upon fitment of vehicle to be towed to stop the sensors continuously sensing the towed vehicle. In the case of recreational vehicles, trucking fleets or even typical cars that may occasionally tow trailers or caravans, the existing systems do not provide the portability nor the adaption to allow components to be swapped from one vehicle to another or to conveniently allow sensing behind the towed vehicle rather than the vehicle itself when in the towed configuration.